Last night was the biggest pub crawl in the southern AU region. I had a good time and met some good people. Although, this morning, it was quite the challenge to try and wash pink zinc oxide off of me thanks to one of my room mates who thought it would be funny to decorate me. We missed the bus into town, which was a bummer, but thankfully a nice lady from the school was heading in with a 15 passenger van and took everyone who was left behind. The crawl was broken down into color groups and I was in the black group, which meant I had to wear all black. That was entirely fine with me and, after I got dress, I realized I was wearing all H&M. Cute right? Still, I had a great night. I met up with several people from my unit at the end of the night but we all got separated coming home. A story was recounted to me that one of my mates was found sitting alone by the taxi stop and said "America left me!" to which my other roommate replied, "It's okay, he went home to cook." And, of course, when they came home, I had a full on meal cooked (And no, mom, it wasn't all my food/ingredients, everyone pitched in and it was just fine).
Today, I didn't do much. I bummed around with my mates and met some new people from BG (Bella Gruin, the other campus of Res units where Mauro and the other Americans live), until I decided to go into town and get groceries for tonight. Kangaroo.
It was Mauro's 21st birthday yesterday and today I decided to make him a Kangaroo dinner for his belated birthday dinner.
I got about a kilo of Kangaroo fillets (about 2 lbs) which was fairly cheap, after coming up with several different recipes to try. I made one batch of pan-seared fillets, marinated in my classic and secret marinade which I use, most commonly, on my Italian rack of lamb. Those fillets turned out perfect and Mauro said he liked them the most. The second batch of fillets was braised in a beef stock with onion, garlic, spices, and mushrooms. Though the flavor was spot on, I overcooked these fillets, seeing as Kangaroo meat is INCREDIBLY lean and I have never successfully braised anything before. Finally, the last round of 'Roo meat, I turned into Kangaroo Wellington. Oh. My. Goodness. This was by far my favorite dish and felt that it turned out nearly perfectly. By the way, I didn't have a meat thermometer and had to make the duxelle sauce without a food processor, which meant GRATING the mushrooms and onion by hand, which was uber tedious. Still, the effort was worth it and the dish was a success! Also, I introduced my RA, as well as a few people from BG (which is where we ended up cooking off the wellingtons) to kangaroo. Imagine that! An American introducing Australians to kangaroo!
As the night wound down, I made friends with a few more RA's (Claire and Loz) who I cooked dinner for, as they had not had the opportunity to have tea tonight, due to other priorities and responsibilities. After trying the dish I whipped up (a pasta with bolognese sauce, and deglazed with red wine), Loz told me that it was fate that we met and she invited me to go to a footie game with her in Melbourne tomorrow! I hope I get to go and am very excited about it! By the way, "Melbourne" is pronounced "Melbin."
As a concluding note, the Great Ocean Road trip that I mentioned in an earlier post is not next weekend but THIS weekend. So, come Saturday night, I should have some gorgeous photos for you all. Until then, here's some kangaroo meat!
This is pan-seared Kangaroo, marinated in and Italian lamb marinade, deglazed in red wine. Very good.
I didn't know you could overcook something you braised, but this is that.
mini Roo Wellingtons!!!
The biggest wellington! So good!
The color was pretty good for not having an instant read meat thermometer! This one's for my grandpa Larry.
Thanks for reading guys. Cheers!
~Daniel
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